TheBakersErasTour

After lunch, Greg, Brooks, Logan and I continued our walk towards the Eiffel Tower. Greg had a spot in mind with a great view. And I had another spot that was close but different that I had seen mentioned on Instagram.

We made the 20 min or so walk pausing to take in the sights.

We were close to the Eiffel Tower now and needed to decide who’s spot to go to. There was fencing being put up in the direction Greg wanted to go (up a hill) but he was sure it would be ok.

His intended destination had been converted into what I think was a temporary food truck area and aquarium. I’m not exactly sure how you install a temporary aquarium but I think that’s what it said in French.

We walked back down the hill and towards the general location I had wanted to go to. We didn’t make it to my spot because we would have had to really back track to get to steps that would have taken us down along the banks of the Seine. There’s a chance the steps would have been closed due to Olympic prep.

We ended up with a great view from a spot along the road.

The decision was made to head back to our apartment via subway. My phone is almost dead and I don’t have the right charging cord with my mophie. Also there is a kitchen store I want to check out that is close to the apartment that the boys aren’t necessarily interested in. So back to the apartment for us all to recharge a bit.

Learning of the day is that when you are on the upper level of a double decker train and your kid is sleeping you don’t wait to wake them up until when the train has stopped. We watched a couple wait to wake him up. The mom sprinted off the train leaving the dad and 6ish year old son behind. The kid was hard to wake up and then almost lost his shoe. Dad and son didn’t make it off the train in time. The mom was on the outside looking in and the dad did a slow wave as the train took off. They got off at the next spot I assume to catch the train in the opposite direction to get back to her.

Maddie and Jake decided to hang back at the apartment and do their own thing. Maddie had some pants to exchange at a store not too far away and they wanted to find Bao Buns for lunch.

Thankfully they snapped some pics for me to document their day. (I got more pics from Jake than Maddie. He understands how to make me happy after 1.5 weeks with us!)

Our wake up time came early for family pictures. We were meeting our photographer Rachel at 7am to try and avoid the crowds. We were supposed to leave the apartment at 6:50 to head to meet her but left a little bit late.

It was a chilly morning that we hadn’t prepared for. Logan and I wore our raincoats to keep us warm between pics and Maddie had a sweatshirt she would put on every time she could.

Rachel made lots of jokes and tried to keep things light. For some reason she kept calling Logan Jordan (probably because it was early and six names is too difficult that early!)

By the time we were done (around 8:40) we were all freezing. We went back to the apartment to change and warm up. Greg, Logan and Brooks walked to get us Starbucks and some pastries for breakfast.

Greg, Brooks and I decided to leave around 10:30 to head to Sacre Coure before finding lunch. Maddie and Jake decided to stay home and rest before heading out for lunch.

We then started our walk up the hill.

We finally made it to the top.

After a short time admiring the views we started the descent.

Now to find lunch. If only we could find something that sounded good.

We decided to take the subway back toward the Arc de Triomphé to eat around there and then walk to the Eiffel Tower. The boys were serenaded.

I stopped in the Swatch store that I somehow missed yesterday. I’m happy to say nothing jumped out as a must have. If they had brought back the see through ones we might have had a problem. We stopped in a few more shops before stopped at an outdoor cafe for lunch.

Next stop: Eiffel Tower.

There was much debate over dinner. After walking 9-10 miles per our Apple Watches I wanted something close. We ended up at Pizza Wawa that had good reviews online. Admittedly, despite thinking pizza would have something for everyone, the menu was a tad strange. The only “normal” pizza on the menu was a margarita. Despite this we decided to stay and make the best of it.

Brooks and Greg ended up ordering the kids pizza which was named the Pinocchio. When it came it had a face arranged with the toppings.

At least the views are pretty from our outdoor table.

I’ve forgotten how slow dinners are here. The slowest part is getting the check to pay. Maddie and Jake had seen a bakery that they wanted to stop at to get some treats earlier that closed at 8pm. Since we were still waiting on our check, they along with Greg and Logan walked to pick out some options.

I’ve somehow broken out in a rash on my arms and legs and am basically miserable. I took a Benadryl at dinner which seems to maybe be taking the edge off but I’m so tired now. Time to stumble back to the apartment to head to bed.

We have another early start time in the morning with family pictures scheduled at 7am.

After a short walk we arrived at our apartment in the Pont Neuf neighborhood. It’s nice and clean and more importantly close to restaurants and attractions.

We landed in Paris a little after 9am. It didn’t take long for us to see our first Olympic reference. It was in the airport as we departed the plane.

We decided to take an Uber to the city. I don’t understand why Greg didn’t order the Bubbles.

After a short 5-10 min wait our driver had arrived to pick us up. Greg had been expecting a 45 min or so trip to the city but ours took much longer.

Our apartment won’t be available until 4pm so we dropped our bags off at the property management office. With no real plans for the day our only real priority is lunch. Pronto.

We found an outdoor café and was seated around 11:45. Lunch doesn’t start until noon but we are fine to sit and wait.

After lunch we just started walking, and walking and walking. This blog is basically now going to turn into a picture book.

Jake’s first Parisian crepe!

Maddie needed a bio break so we stopped in McDonald’s in hopes they had one she could use. Unfortunately they did not. They did have some fun sandwich offerings.

So we thought seeing all the Olympic stuff would be cool but we were mostly wrong. So much of the city is blocked off for preparations. The Tuileries were blocked, much of the walkways along the Seine and more. I can’t imagine living here and having this ongoing for weeks and months. I am exciting to watch the Olympics to see how this all comes together. Especially the opening ceremony on the Seine via boat.

So the official Olympic store was actually cool. A few of us got some things here including myself who picked a nice warm sweatshirt that I’m thinking I will be wearing around Paris. Did I mention I didn’t pack well?

We stopped in an Adidas store to see if they had any shoes for Brooks. They did not but they did have these models of people playing sports which reminded me of the interesting models in the kids science museum in Amsterdam. If you remember those from a previous blog. 🙂

Louis Vuitton is building something crazy. I can’t even figure out if this is a facade or the building.

As we were resting our feet we realized that we only have 75 minutes to get back and collect our luggage before the office closes. And we are three miles from where we need to be. I would have loved to subway back but Greg didn’t act like that would be much faster (he probably just wanted to walk so we all started the three mile trek back. At a rapid pace.

With an early flight this morning to Paris we stayed at a Radisson within walking distance to the airport. There is both a Radisson red and a Radisson blue….not sure why there are two or why we chose red but were greeted with a red skiing moose. 

Our rooms were supposed to have runway views. Unfortunately due to our arrival time last night and our 6am lobby meeting time this morning to head over there was little to no airport traffic.

The lobby had a typewriting I assume that’s for decoration only but I’d love to give it a go if I had paper and no time. Also seems fitting for the Era’s tour with the Toured Poets Department lyrics for all the swifties.

The lobby and hotel were packed last night but this morning the lobby and airport are dead. Here’s hoping for smooth sailing through security. I always get nervous in Europe since every country seems to have their own rules of what must come out of your bag when going through.

It was mostly smooth with virtually no line. However, my and Greg’s backpack got stopped for a secondary screen by the slowest agent ever. After completely the bags before ours with absolutely no regard for time she got to ours. She asked if we had food, liquids or electronics in our bags. I’m not sure if Greg missed the food part or just wanted to forget we both had giant blocks of Norvega cheese in each backpack he said no electronics or liquids. She said food? He responded oh yes, we have cheese. She cracked a smile and upon opening both our bags and seeing the giant blocks of cheese she and the screening agent both laughed.

Thankfully we escaped with all our cheese with just a requirement that the cheese go through screening separately and our backpacks be sent back through.

I would have been so sad to have had to leave that cheese despite not knowing if we are planning on eating it the next three days in Paris or somehow try to bring some back home. That’s a problem for another day.

Logan and I grabbed breakfast while Maddie and Jake went to Starbucks and Greg and Brooks shopped duty free.

After a short wait it’s time to board our two hour flight to Paris. We have nothing specific planned other than some forced early morning family pics tomorrow morning. Potential options include a trip to Claude Monet’s house in Giverny, a Seine River cruise, a trip to our favorite virtual reality escape room and obviously other sight seeing.

But first, we need to actually make it to Paris and to our Airbnb to drop our bags since we won’t be able to check in until later.

One of the many unchecked items off our very long to do list was a game of Uno No Mercy with everyone playing. We were missing a few but had a game with 9 of us. Despite it being her first game, Sarah was the ultimate overall champion finally securing an official win for the Bayne Family.

We had a light lunch, Norwegian style that Jason managed to set up without Karen’s help since she was still working. After eating and enjoying the beautiful views it was off for our final adventure in Fevik.

Logan had commented on the way back from breakfast on the boat to Philip that they hadn’t swam yet. Normally Logan finds a way to do some cliff jumping or something in the water while we are here. This trip that hadn’t happened yet mostly due to the cooler temps and the wind. Today though is beautiful and it feels much warmer with the sun out and the moderate to light winds.

Jason had a call he needed to take for work (or he needed a much deserved break from everyone or he didn’t want wet kids in his car…or all of it) so he suggested that we take the kids to a spot that only Philip and Pia had been a time or two. He told Sarah where to go loosely. I entered the name in my maps and we were off in search of a jumping spot in a river. (Warmer water with no jellies.)

After almost heading down someone’s driveway accidentally and a tour down a new development that eventually was a dead end we found a place to park. We started down a path that also was someone’s driveway before Philip was almost certain we needed to cross the road and go down a different path.

After jumping a few guardrails we were on an official path and we were feeling hopeful maybe we had found it.

The path pretty quickly turned into more of a hike than I’d expected I’d be on today but was so beautiful.

Two American men and a Norwegian man arrive at the river to swim with two wetsuits. You can guess which ones used the wetsuits.

I kid, but not. The water in the sea had been in the 50’s and the Norwegians were swimming like no big deal. Many had been in shorts and t shirts the previous few days while we had been layered up. Jake hadn’t even planned to swim but Jason gave him a wetsuit and was basically like it’s time man, it’s your only chance. I don’t think Jake was really sure what he was going to do until we arrived but in the end Jason got his way like he normally does.

After some assistance with getting the very tight wetsuits on they were ready to go. Philip went first followed by Logan and then Jake.

It didn’t take long before Logan was doing flips off the high platform. Good to see he’s still got it!

While the boys were jumping Pia noticed a snake that she was not a fan of. Everyone had to go check it out. It was so tiny I’m not sure how she even saw it!

After he’d already jumped in and gotten wet Logan said he could have done it without a wetsuit as the water wasn’t that cold. There were two girls who had walked down midway through our time who waited for us to finish. They walked down to the water and swam in their bikinis with clearly no wetsuits. It was a great afternoon that checked the swimming box.

Karen was home from work when we got back to the house. We spent the next few hours just sitting and talking before we headed back up to Oslo. Brooks and Pia played video games while the rest of us strategized about our next visit and all the things we’d like to do. Lots of items left on our shared bucket list.

Unfortunately all good things must come to an end and we needed to make the 4 hour trek back to Oslo. Better grab one last ice cream for the road. Pretty sure that was Maddie’s idea which was a great one. I’d initially declined before coming to my senses.

In the end there were a few tears but mostly gratitude for time together. Is it too early to start looking at possible dates for our next Fevik visit?

I woke up way earlier than I needed to and reached for my phone to check in on what I might have missed since last night. Once I did that I was unable to go back to sleep so I did all The NY Times puzzles and then decided to see what all we needed to do before we checked out of our Airbnb at 11.

The host had left 5 pages of instructions in the house all in Norwegian that I had so carefully used google translate to decode. There was nothing included about check out so I went to the Airbnb app where I noticed two references to the fact that guests must bring their own towels. Yikes.

Sidebar…the house had Burberry and Louis Vuitton towels which I originally thought were fake but then had decided after seeing some other stuff in the house maybe they weren’t.

1. Who would actually buy said towels.

2. If you did why are they in an Airbnb.

It’s not entirely uncommon here to have hosts that don’t provide bedding or towels but I try to be so careful to ensure I know what I need ahead of time. The Bayne’s have been so nice in the past to loan us things if needed. I sent a frantic text to Jason asking to borrow 3 towels for the morning showers since he was coming over at 8 to pick up whomever wanted breakfast. That turned out to be me, Brooks, Greg and Logan.

It was a beautiful morning with calm water, sunny skies and not much wind. Basically the perfect day on our last partial day.

We have lots of groceries left so I decided to eat a pre breakfast before my breakfast. This yogurt came with the cutest spoon.

Greg rode with Pia, while the rest of us were in the other boat driven at first by Sarah and later by Philip. Karen was working and Lisa went to meet friends.

We are headed to Grimstad for breakfast which is about a 30 min boat ride and takes us through a small canal. This is a canal that Phillip ran the boat into the sides the first time he was here. He did perfect today.

We docked the boats and headed toward town to the breakfast place. We ate at Happytime Pizza on our first trip to Norway and it was so good.

Pia got a smoothie bowl and proceeded to try and pick around all the toppings. Pretty sure she should have just gotten a smoothie. Most everyone else got cinnamon rolls.

We walked back to the boats to head back to Fevik so we would have time to finish packing and drying the towels we weren’t supposed to have used. We all picked boats that we wanted. I like this one…among others.

I was assigned by Jason to drive the boat home and to beat Greg. Sarah was next to me telling me when the speed limit was 5 knots as well as where to go. Sarah would tell me to take the speed down and Jason would motion to go faster. Basically it was this way the entire time. Sarah being responsible and Jason saying to speed up.

I beat Greg which really wasn’t a race because. Pia’s boat has a top speed of 18 knots and they went the long way.

We made it back to the dock where we were getting dropped off. Phillip parked the boat for me. There were so many jellyfish in the marina. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this many concentrated in one place or maybe it’s just that the water is so clear.

We made check out right at 10:55. Time to head to the Bayne’s.

Our last full day in Fevik started off slow. Jason picked up Brooks for Church around 10:30. Greg went for another run, I blogged, kids slept mostly in. The weather is beautiful today with not as much wind as yesterday.

I sat out on the terrace enjoying the weather as Greg did some work.

We made a quick trip to the Joker to get ham for sandwiches for lunch. Decided I might as well get an ice cream sandwich for lunch dessert. Maddie got an ice cream cone that wasn’t the mini size that Jason was so upset about earlier in the week.

We are hosting dinner tonight so Greg and I prepped some stuff while we had some time. The menu is veggies with ranch dressing (the Bayne’s don’t do ranch…gotta bring some American culture to them), spaghetti, salad, broccoli, salted vegetables, and garlic bread.

Around 1:30 we headed to meet the Bayne’s near Pia’s boat dock for some fun. On the agenda was kayaking, stand up paddle boarding, volleyball, frisbee, boating and anything else I’m sure Jason could think of.

While Jason drove over to get his boat Logan and Greg decided to go for a kayak trip across the water to an island.

Jason came over with the boat and when he head Greg and Logan had paddled off he decided to fly his drone over to go check them out.

After they had already started coming back Jason had the bright idea to go meet them and tell them to paddle to Africa (an island that was farther away.) This news wasn’t overly well received by Greg and Logan who had mostly made it back to the dock before they were told to turn around and paddle farther. Logan said he would do it but he wouldn’t paddle back home and also asked if we had water. Jason quickly said “yes we have water!” He then quickly turned to Karen and said “do we have water?”

We arrived in Africa, docked the boats and carried our snacks to a picnic table. Greg and Logan asked if I had brought their shoes. (I didn’t even know they hadn’t worn their shoes.) Jason sent Pia back in her boat to get their shoes so they could more easily explore the island.

It’s a good things Greg got his shoes since he ended up running around chasing sheep for the fun of it.

After exploring the island we decided it was time to head back. It became evident really quickly that Jason had no clue what he was doing with the kayak. He somehow also convinced Brooks to take the other kayak and for them to take the longer route through the river back. The questions he was asking about the kayak did not instill confidence in me that Brooks would come home alive. Pia followed them in her boat and said she would call the rescue helicopter if needed. I asked her to take pics of that happened.

The boat made it back to the dock way faster than the kayakers and Pia/Greg. I took the Baker kids plus Jake and Sarah home with me in the van to start prepping for dinner. Jason brought Greg, Brooks and Pia over once they made it back and Karen and Lisa joined soon after.

Despite not having all the normal things we typically use for dinner we managed to pull off an edible meal. This included me using an appliance I’ve never seen to steam the broccoli. Lisa changed the language on it from Norwegian to English but I’m still not sure what it is. It’s like a built in oven that steams fish or vegetables. Do we have such a thing in the states? I’m not sure if I’m into it or not. I think I’d rather have a microwave (which this house doesn’t have.)

While we finished dinner there was a friendly game of badminton happening on the terrace.

And now for the answer everyone (but really just me) has been waiting for. I have confirmation from Brooks, Logan and Greg that my kransekeke is better than the one I bought at the store. I feel so validated right now.

For dessert we had the choice of strawberry or mango sorbet, vanilla ice cream, or an ice cream float with the flavor of your choosing.

Sarah made a strawberry sorbet and orange Fanta float in a bowl that Jason said was embarrassing that she didn’t use a cup. (He was joking….I think.)

I commented how good the vanilla ice cream tasted. It reminded me of the snow cream my mom used to make which was extra vanilla-y. Karen pointed out that we got the low fat version and asked if we did that on purpose. Nope, we just can’t read Norwegian. It was good but she said the full fat is even creamier. Now I feel like I missed out.

Next up…the event we have all been waiting for…Ultimate Frisbee. The official record is Baker Family 2 Bayne Family 0. I had told Greg before we came that we probably needed to let Jason win this year.

The teams were a bit mixed because not everyone played for various reasons. We were missing Philip and Maddie. Greg said Jake should be on the Bayne team to even things out a bit despite me saying we needed Jake on our team. We took Lisa on our team. We played with 5 players vs their 6 but they had two younger players with Pia and Karen’s nephew.

The Baker Family is undefeated. I repeat…the Baker Family remains undefeated.

Brooks and Logan played so well for our team. I was definitely the weak link but not weak enough to make us lose. As we were walking back up to the house I asked Jason if this was going to be the last time the Bayne’s host us here and he said no definitely not. It’s the last year we win.

It seems as though the Bayne’s are headed into training camp…or so Jason says.

Early start tomorrow with an 8am boat pick up for anyone who wants to go to Grimstad for breakfast. I hear talk of cinnamon rolls so I’m definitely going!